Your ping-pong ball anology is flawed (Score 2)

Ok, here's the way it was explained to me. Instead of ping-pong balls, imagine a really long rope, that you could pull back and forth to send messages or whatnot. When you pull on one end of the rope (or push in a ping-pong ball), you start a compression wave, and this wave must travel at a speed less than or equal to c. This applies no matter how hard the rope/ping-pong balls are. Like it or not, c is forever (damn laws of physics!)